Report: Immigrant farm workers treated badly

Amy Neff Roth

Monday

Jun 12, 2017 at 12:01 AMJun 12, 2017 at 7:15 AM

Immigrant farm workers work long hours, are paid low wages and are susceptible to injuries, according to a recently released report.

Dairy production and processing generates $14 billion a year in New York, but no one knows much about the workers behind that production, said Rebecca Fuents, lead organizer at the Workers’ Center of Central New York in Syracuse and one of the authors of the report, “Milked: Immigrant Dairy Farmworkers in New York State.” It was written by a team from the workers’ center, the Worker Justice Center of New York, Syracuse University and Cornell University.

“We know a lot about the farmers,” she said. “People are familiar with seeing the scenery of the rural areas with the dairy farms. We see the cows. We smell the particular smells of the farm. And a lot of the farmers, the employers, are known in the community.

“But the people who work there are very isolated and we hardly ever know who they are.”

The report attempts to answer that question, asking upstate workers detailed questions about their lives. The results paint a grim picture. Here are a few of the report’s findings:

• The average dairy farmworker works 12 hours a day, six days a week, but it’s not uncommon for workers to work seven days a week. One worker in the report said he works 85 hours a week, but when his co-workers said they needed a break, their employer threatened to fire them.

• Most farm workers earn about minimum wage. And 28 percent of them have experienced wage theft at least once.

• Between 2006 and 2016, 69 farmworkers have died on New York dairy farms. Among the workers interviewed for the report, two-thirds said they have been injured on the job at least once, with 68 percent of those workers saying they needed medical attention for their injury. Kicks, crushed limbs, eye injuries from chemicals, falls, lacerations from equipment and broken bones were among the injuries reported.

• One-third of the interviewed workers said they hadn’t received any training, which can make the job more dangerous.

• Immigrant farm workers tend to be isolated, leaving the farm as infrequently as every 11 days.

The safety of immigrant farmworkers also is affected by the fact that the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration is not allowed to inspect farms with fewer than 11 employees, freeing those farms from safety regulations.

Fuentes said she’s been working with dairy workers since 2013 and hears a lot about all the investment made in making sure cows are comfortable and well cared for.

“How are the cows treated? We hear so much concern about that and that’s important," she said. "But when I hear workers say that 'I feel that the employer cares more about the cows than the workers,' that is a really strong statement that stays with us.”

None of the 88 workers from 53 farms in central, northern and western New York who were interviewed for the report live in Oneida, Herkimer, Madison or Otsego counties. But there are immigrant workers there, Fuentes said. And conditions are pretty much the same across the state, the report found.

The report's authors made some recommendations for improvements, including asking the state to eliminate the exemption of farm workers from labor rights, letting undocumented immigrants get driver’s licenses, providing more oversight of safety on dairy farms and making sure that farmworkers have safe and “dignified” housing. They also ask large dairy companies, such as Chobani, to buy milk from suppliers that make sure farmworkers are treated well.

It’s an issue that anyone who drinks milk or eats yogurt should care about, Fuentes said.

“There are many workers who are left behind and they don’t have the rights,” she said.

“When we buy that milk,” she added, “we are part of the system.”

Follow @OD_Roth on Twitter or call her at 315-792-5166.

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